


clarity which clouds my mind

by lady_ragnell



Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Ethical Dilemmas, Gen, Hullen (Killjoys), Post-Canon, The Cleansed (Killjoys)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21787135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Fancy's first warrant since the Lady's defeat makes him question what to do about someone who's trying to recreate the Green.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	clarity which clouds my mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hearteating](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearteating/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, **hearteating**!
> 
> **Warnings:** mentions of former battles and former Hullen and how it felt (or didn't feel) to be Hullen. Considered murder by the POV character.
> 
> The title is from "Thistle and Weeds" by Mumford & Sons.

“Warrant for you, special request,” says Turin when Fancy makes it back to the Quad after his latest trip out to take care of the Lady's spawn.

Normally, he gets a few days to rest after every trip, but apparently not this time. Fancy sighs. “Where does Dutch want me this time?”

“Not Yardeen. A good old RAC warrant, right here in the Quad. Joy's pretty good, thought about taking it myself, but they say they want you.”

“Of course they do, if they want the best,” Fancy says automatically, but he barely cares about the old pattern of conversation. He's too busy wondering how long it's been since the last time he took on a warrant and not one of Dutch's missions. Too long. Maybe since before the Lady took his memories, because as soon as he had them back, he was fighting for his life. Even before that, there were missions, Dutch's war, but there weren't warrants. “Who?”

“Kendry and Kin Rit. You're going to Qresh.”

That gets Fancy's real attention, fast. He's got no reason to like or trust either of them, even if it's widely and quietly known among the new RAC that the Ten are the ones bankrolling the missions to kill the spawn. And if they have jobs they need done, they can call Dutch or Jaqobis, as family favors. “Why do they want me?”

“Thought you were the best, Fancy.” Turin claps him on the shoulder, and Fancy rolls his eyes and shrugs him off, like he's expected to do. Turin doesn't care if he's uneasy, probably because Fancy has never let himself be uneasy about a warrant before. Dutch got him used to missions he didn't have to think about. He doesn't know how he feels about being reluctant to do a warrant he would have been happy to have, no details asked, just a few years ago. “Hells if I know. Just go deal with whatever it is and make sure it's not a problem for me, I'm fielding yet another godsdamn diplomatic incident they're trying to lay on the RAC's doorstep and I'm not even sure which Jaqobis caused it this time.”

And that, it seems, is all he's going to get. It's all he used to need, though, so Fancy tells himself it's all he needs now.

*

The warrant, which appears on his PDD as a Level 3 for Land Kin Rit, takes him to some quiet getaway estate on Qresh, not any of the official holdings of Land Kin Rit or Land Kendry. Then again, if they want Fancy for something, it makes sense.

They're waiting, tea set out, when their security guards let him inside, and Fancy sits down when Delle Seyah gestures him to an open seat. “Welcome back to the Quad, Mr. Lee.”

Fancy nods and doesn't bother trying to hide that he runs a scanner over his tea before he takes a drink. No poison, and Kin Rit's lips twitch into a smirk. “What do you want me to do? It's been a while since I had a request for a warrant that wasn't the RAC's newest mission.”

“That's a shame. Any idiot with a gun can kill one of those creatures these days,” says Delle Seyah. “We still need the RAC, in whatever form.”

Kin Rit's name on the warrant, but Kendry's words and Kendry's flattery. Kin Rit's just watching, and he turns to her, mostly as a test. “What's this job? I'm a RAC agent, I'm not going to back out once I take a warrant.”

She may have Dutch's face, but her smile is very different. “Someone's trying to manufacture the Green.”

Delle Seyah cuts in. “We want you to bring her, and all her research, here.”

Of course someone is trying. Probably they are, too, or they'd been thinking about it and figure that taking over this research is the next best thing. When there's a substance out there that heals, that makes people strong, that makes them, some of them, obedient, people are going to want it. Fancy is only surprised that it's taken this long, and that they're asking him instead of Dutch and her team. “Why send me?”

“Because she trusts you,” says Kin Rit.

Delle Seyah produces a picture with a smug smile. Fancy doesn't do her the satisfaction of reacting, but he knows the face. Ria wasn't one of the ones who joined the Cleansed who piloted Black Root ships in the fight against Kin Rit the first time she came back to the Quad, but Fancy knew her. He knew most of the Hullen in the Quad who'd been Cleansed, and he talked with her a few times about science and tech, about discoveries and advances that didn't remind either of them why they were talking in the first place. “Haven't spoken to her in a while,” he says, and crosses his arms.

“Are you turning down the warrant?” Delle Seyah asks. If he's here at all, she wants his help, but not so much that if he walks away they'll be helpless. She can afford the smugness.

If he brings Ria in himself, she'll be safer, and he can see himself how close she is. It's been a while since he was cleansed, since he helped D'avin recruit an army, but he still feels responsible for them, in some way. Even if he doesn't trust their motives, he's glad they called him in instead of going themselves, or calling anyone else. And, in the end, it's a warrant, and he doesn't see the point in playing political games with those. He's aware, somewhere, that he's having to convince himself to take the warrant, and he doesn't like it. It's not who he is, for himself or for the RAC. This job needs the Fancy Lee they called on, the one who gets his warrants done. Especially because they're almost asking him not to be neutral, getting the Cleansed involved in this. “I don't turn down warrants, seyah.”

“I'll look forward to seeing you, then,” says Kin Rit. “And her.”

Fancy takes the picture from Delle Seyah and stands up. “I'm the best the RAC has. You'll get her.”

“I'm sure,” says Delle Seyah.

Fancy looks between them, wonders about the rumors chasing around the Quad that they're still Hullen somehow. Dutch doesn't talk about it, and her team follows her lead, but this conversation feels like an answer. “I'll let you know when I'm coming back in,” he says, and neither of them stops him when he leaves.

*

Not all warrants are easy, not all of them feel good, before or after, but they all need doing. Fancy grits his teeth and gets to work.

It's not hard to find Ria. All Fancy has to do is ask a few questions among the Cleansed. Outside of Old Town, with new settlements springing up, everyone having to get over some of the past because there's no room for old problems, the Cleansed are absorbed again, everybody forgetting or pretending to forget about them, but they still keep an eye on each other.

When he asks about Ria, they seem troubled. They don't say why—they know he's still with the RAC, and he doesn't lie, and they'll protect their own, even from their own—but there are frowns. People talk around what she's doing, and he thinks maybe they expect him to stop her, somehow, even if they wish he wasn't doing it for a warrant.

Three questions get him the location of a lab out in the badlands, an abandoned Company facility that got repurposed as a clinic for miners and then left completely sometime after everything went to shit.

Before she was Hullen, Ria was a killjoy, good enough for recruitment into Level Six, long enough ago that everyone was sure she was dead. She was a killjoy like Zeph or John Jaqobis are now, more comfortable on a lab or with a computer than with a gun in her hand, but she's had decades of Hullen muscle memory since then. Most scientists, Fancy wouldn't bother going back to one of his boltholes for equipment, but for one of his own, someone he knows will fight hard and well, someone who might have something close enough to the Green to make her heal, he needs some extras.

Even that only puts it off for so long, though. Even for a former or current Hullen, Fancy doesn't need much of the extra equipment. And if he shows up to Ria's lab bristling with weapons and gadgets, she won't be going anywhere quickly. He drives out and parks a walk away, straps on anything he thinks he'll need, and starts walking.

*

Ria meets him at the door. “Saw someone coming on the cameras,” she says, and jerks her head behind her. “Come on in.”

It's spare inside, nothing but her equipment, a cot with one blanket shoved roughly in a corner. It looks like Hullen barracks, but that doesn't say anything. Ria hasn't had much time to build up personal possessions again, and doesn't have much joy for it either. Roiling in a glass vial over a flame, there's something green. It's the wrong shade, but it's not far off either.

“Word is getting around, what you're doing,” says Fancy, and leans against the door.

Ria snorts and sits down on her cot. “The great killjoy Fancy Lee. Aren't you crusading these days? Am I a crusade?”

“You're a warrant.”

“After the way the RAC treated us, you still bring that to my doorstep?”

Fancy shakes his head. “Someone would have come knocking. I thought you at least deserved for it to be one of your own. You want Yardeen to come instead? She would have been the next call.”

She drums her fingers on her thin mattress, watches him a little longer. “So what kind of warrant is this?”

“Escort. To Qresh. Where they'll either set you up with a lab and try to control you or kill you, depending on how nice you play it.” Fancy shrugs. “You should have known you'd get their attention. They don't want anyone else to be able to control their edge.”

Ria shakes her head and stands up. “No one will ever be able to control me again. I'm doing it better. Faster, stronger, able to heal … there's no Lady in the Green anymore, or maybe I'm creating it from scratch. Whatever I'm making, I'm in charge of it, and they won't be able to control that.”

“What do you think Aneela Seyah Kin Rit has been doing for hundreds of years? You're in for a fight.”

“Maybe. But I think I've learned a trick or two.”

She has. All of them have. But probably not as many as Kin Rit has. What Delle Seyah lets the Quad see is a terrifying woman whose wounds close over, who doesn't hesitate to resort to violence, and it's no surprise that not a lot of people have done the research to learn what Fancy has, how she was a scientist on Arkyn. And not everyone has listened to Dutch and D'avin and John Jaqobis's drunk stories about the Aneela they first knew. “Maybe. Maybe enough. But I still don't know why you're doing it.”

“I'm just the first to think of it. I won't be the last. We all miss it, Fancy. Some of us just don't admit it.”

That's a dig, but it misses. Fancy misses being Hullen every time he's not strong enough, every time he's hurt but has to keep going. Sometimes, in a sideways kind of way, he misses the connection, the Green making him part of a network, something even bigger than the RAC. But there are tradeoffs he would never take. “And the feelings? Maybe you'll be under control, but Kin Rit and Kendry are the only two I've ever known who got to keep their own feelings.”

“Shit.” Ria barks out a laugh. “Don't you miss it? Not feeling so much all the time? Not being hurt when people hate you, not being hurt when you lose people you care about? Not even risking that, the caring about them?” She tilts her head at him. “You know why they chose us. Because we were good killjoys, sure, but they chose us because we were already halfway there.”

On his worse days, Fancy believes that. The RAC has needed him, over the years, to be cold and emotionless and get the job done, and it suits him. It's easier. That doesn't mean he wants it to be easier. Being Fancy Lee, designated asshole, the only RAC agent he knows who never fudges the oath, is hard, and he wants it to be. “I think we all know that's a lie,” he says.

“But missing it isn't.”

A life where the orders, the warrants, were easy because he never questioned them, because he always knew what he needed to know, and where he could move from one to the next without having any regrets. It's not what he wants, but he can't deny that it was a relief, in some ways. “No, it's not,” he says.

Ria nods and stands up. “Then stick around, see what I'm doing. I know you get the science more than most field agents do. See if you can follow me.”

*

He can. People like Ria, like Jaqobis and Zeph, they underestimate his ability to keep up on this kind of thing, but Fancy knows tech, and he knows the Green pretty well by now. So he knows Ria is close. It won't be exactly what it was, though. It's going to be everything the Green was but the collective memory of it. That can't be synthesized in a lab, not yet, though he thinks with the start she has, Kin Rit could figure it out.

For now, Kendry and Kin Rit are using the Hullen power, as the last two, for good, or as much good as anyone from Qresh has ever done for the rest of the Quad. But with access to the Green, will they always? Or will they decide that maybe it's better if they have a few soldiers under their control? And if they don't, will Ria?

“So,” she says when she's done explaining. “When are we leaving?”

“I still can't believe you want to go. Throwing yourself on the mercy of the Ten? That's not like you.”

Ria shrugs. “We want the same thing, me and them.” She grins at him. “What do you say? I can share the first batch with you, when it's ready.”

“I think we figured out the first time that it's not fair to the rest of the J when I'm Hullen. No one else has a chance of beating me at anything,” he says, just as light as she is, pretending like it's a night out at the Royale, if there was still the Royale to go to.

Fancy fulfills his warrants. He doesn't pass judgment on them, or decide he knows better, or go off-script, because he believes, he's always believed, that someone has to be in the middle. Someone has to be neutral, and within the RAC, which tries but fails too often, Fancy tries and fails less. And to fulfill this warrant, he has to bring Ria to Qresh and let Kin Rit and Kendry have her, or her work. They're not monsters like they used to be, Dutch apparently has that impact on people, but he doesn't trust them, either. Not with the kind of power the Green can give. Maybe they'll synthesize it themselves someday, but they'll do that anyway. He doesn't have to help them.

But if he doesn't fulfill the warrant, what does he do? He can leave Ria here, and let her succeed or fail. This is addiction more than it is anything else. She might stop with just herself, and people like being the only ones with power. She might destroy it as soon as she succeeds. Or she might not, and one rogue Hullen on Westerley fighting two on Qresh could rip the Quad apart again, when it's just barely starting to get better.

There's a third choice, too. He doesn't want to take that one. It's not succeeding at the warrant, the code he's lived by for years. It's not even pretending to fail at the warrant. It's not what Dutch or her team would do, with their tendency to pull wins out of their asses when there's no way to win. But he's beginning to think it's the only way out.

“It's getting late,” says Ria, like she's taking pity on him. Maybe she is. She doesn't want to have empathy, but she does. But having it and not wanting it is worse than wanting it and not having it. “Stick around for the night. Share some rations, I'm sick of what I stocked up on, so we can swap. Ask me about it. You said better one of us coming out to see my operation and take me back to Qresh. I say better one of us making it. I'm not going to be the last. Don't you want someone who knows how it feels doing it?”

Fancy doesn't want anyone doing it. “Yeah, sure, let's share rations,” he says, and he doesn't ask her about the Green. He asks about their fellow Cleansed, and the roommates she was living with in Old Town, where they are now. She smiles like she knows what he's doing, but she answers anyway.

“I'm not going to change my mind,” she says when he finally goes outside to set up his tent. “May as well fulfill your warrant. The great Fancy Lee? You have to.”

He doesn't know how to walk back into the RAC and say he failed. He'd like to go his whole life without doing it. But he'd like to go his whole life without thinking about being Hullen again, too, so for once, all his thinking can't be about what the RAC wants.

*

“I'm honestly surprised I woke up,” Ria says from the corner of her lab when she's stretched and yawned herself into sitting up. “I was starting to think you were lying about what level that warrant was, give me a mercy kill in my sleep.”

“I thought about it,” Fancy admits, and pours her a glass of hokk from her own supply. He doesn't care if she just woke up. They both need it. “But no, I wasn't lying. It was a level three.”

She raises her eyebrows and gets out of bed. “You going against a warrant? I never thought I'd see the day.”

Fancy hands her the hokk, and they both drink. “I guess some things are more important.”

“But you're not killing me.”

“No. I'm fulfilling the warrant. I'm taking you to Qresh, and you'll probably get to continue your research.” He stands up. “Pack up, by the way, and pack fast, and I want a vial of your best sample.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Oh? Just like that? What do you want the sample for, if you think this whole business is so shitty? As an insurance policy, I bet. In case you decide I'm right after all.”

“No. I fought hard, and a lot of us fought hard, for the ability to make our choices and feel our feelings, good and bad.” He drains his glass. “Drink up and pack up. I'm getting you to Qresh today, and we have a stop to make on the way.”

“That's not how escort warrants work.”

“Warrant text doesn't say straight there.” It's still not RAC policy and they both know it, but it's a sleepless night's worth of compromise. He'll do the warrant, because the Quad still needs the RAC and the RAC needs agents who do their damn jobs, but that doesn't mean he only has to do the warrant. “You'll see what's happening when we get there. You're locked and served, by the way, and there was a tracker in that hokk so don't try to bolt.”

*

Ria crosses her arms when she finds herself in the middle of a circle of the Cleansed and turns to Fancy. “I didn't agree to this.”

Fancy nods at them, and then at her. “I don't care. You're locked and served, so be locked. I have shit to do, so I'll be back.”

“Letting them do the dirty work and kill me while you're gone is cowardice,” she spits, arms still crossed.

He asked them to let him finish his warrant, and he thinks they'll respect that, but he's not going to tell her that. Maybe she'll be honest, if she's scared. Or let them convince her that it's a bad idea. “If anyone gets to have a say in you trying to replicate the Green, it's them. Maybe you'll even get a few lining up to go back. But it's your job to explain it all to them. I'll be back.”

There are rustlings, few of them happy, but they deserve to make their choices, even if they're stupid choices. He just hopes they don't follow Ria's lead. He doesn't want the RAC to fight another war in two hundred years because another Hullen army has been built up.

Fancy walks away, and he hears Ria start talking. Good. Gives him enough time for the meeting he has to have.

*

“Well, this is clandestine,” says Pree, leaning against his vehicle, when Fancy arrives at their rendezvous. Gared is probably somewhere ready to jump in if Pree needs backup, but that can't hurt. “I haven't seen you in a while, Fancy Lee. What are you into now? Tell me our dear seyahs didn't get sick of me and decide to have me killed already.”

Fancy sighs. “Why does everyone think I'm going to kill them?”

Pree raises an eyebrow at him. “I meant that you were here to warn me. Damn, you'd do it?”

Now that he's violating the spirit of warrants, it's easy to consider not doing one outright. Even then, though, it would be more a matter of refusing them in the first place if they don't feel like the balance the RAC needs to provide. Killing Pree wouldn't help that balance. “Probably not,” he admits, and ignores Pree's triumphant smirk.

“So what are you here for, then? Are coded messages to meet up in the badlands your way of making a social call?”

“Social calls to the governor of Westerley get noticed. By Qresh. I have something to tell you about.” Fancy takes out the vial Ria gave him and tosses it to Pree. “That.”

“Shit.” Pree looks at the vial and then back up at him. “I thought all this was gone. Where did you find more?”

“Someone is making it.” He nods at the vial. “That's not perfect yet, but she'll get there. Especially with the resources she's going to have to work with. I got the warrant because Kendry and Kin Rit want her escorted to Qresh. I don't think they're planning to kill her.”

Pree taps a finger against his chin and turns the vial over in his hands. “And what do you expect me to do about it? You can't kill whoever's making it, but maybe a transport sabotage? Been a while since I had a thrill.”

Fancy shakes his head and sighs. “If it were that, I would have just killed her. Warrant or no warrant. But if she doesn't do it, someone else will. Maybe even Kin Rit herself. I just don't want it to be a secret. If the governor of Westerley knows, and he keeps an eye on the proceedings ...”

“You think they'll let me in on it?” Pree arches a brow. “I'm barely wringing aid out of them.”

“I think they'll have to.” Fancy looks pointedly at the vial until Pree looks at it too. “You're going to give that to Zeph, tell her to tell Dutch and her team what's going on. Dutch is the only person alive who Aneela Kin Rit might listen to.”

Pree closes his fist on the vial. “I can do that. And what about you? What are you going to do?”

Fancy smiles. The Cleansed are probably done talking to Ria now. She's probably alive, since he asked for a peaceful discussion, and probably very excited to be away from them. “I'm going to fulfill the warrant. What else do I ever do?”

For a moment, Pree just watches him, and then he smiles in return. “You know, I think I'd like to find out.”

*

Ria, on the flight to Qresh, is quiet. He doesn't know how her conversation with the Cleansed went. When he came for her, there were only a few people waiting with her, and none of them were talking to her. A few smiled at her as they left, but not many. Fancy will have to ask around, soon, see who was tempted and who might follow that temptation into a new war, but for now, he lands at the coordinates one of Delle Seyah's people sends him, another anonymous estate in Qresh's wilds, and walks Ria off the ship.

A nervous man does something close to bowing when they disembark, and there are guards in the colors of Land Kendry and Land Kin Rit waiting. “Ma'am, we are authorized to show you your new lab space. You'll speak to the queens as soon as they're free,” says the man. “Mr. Lee, they'll speak with you now.”

Fancy wants to make a show of pushing back, asking for his joy since the warrant is complete and fly away, but he can't do that. Not this time. This warrant isn't one he's going to forget about. There's no ignoring the consequences of bringing Ria here to them. “Right. I'll just go in?”

The man twitches a little, and one of the guards steps forward. “He'll escort you.”

He does, without talking, and Fancy is shown into a comfortable room, full of cushions and smelling of tea and someone's perfume. Delle Seyah is sitting up primly on some of the pillows. Kin Rit is sprawled across them, but no one is going to tell Aneela Seyah Kin Rit to mind her manners. There's one hard chair in the room, set up facing them, and he wonders if it's an attempt to make him uncomfortable or a placement for his comfort.

“So,” says Delle Seyah.

“So,” Fancy agrees. “Warrant's fulfilled. She and all her research are going to a lab right now. I think we're done here.”

“Are we?” Kin Rit asks, turning her head to look at him. “We had an interesting message from Pree the bartender not long ago.”

Fancy looks back. “I brought her, and I brought her research. Like I said, I did the warrant. I always do.”

“And spreading the knowledge around was a little bonus?” Delle Seyah asks, and pours him some tea. “This is an important Company secret. We could get you in a lot of trouble for this.”

“You never said it was a secret.” They could all posture all day, snipe at each other and never admit fault, but Fancy doesn't care to do that. Not about this. “The Quad can't survive another war, more secrets. More Hullen. The RAC takes no sides. Knowing Qresh is trying to make the Green again and doing nothing? That would be taking a side. I just evened the odds.”

Kin Rit sits up on her elbows. She's smiling, but that doesn't mean much. Fancy's pretty sure she would smile while disemboweling someone, and that she probably has. “I like you. You seemed like a good man, in the Green. You were very competent, as Papa's right hand man.”

Fancy grits his teeth. He wasn't anything good, when he was Hullen. He betrayed everything he believes in, and hurt people he respects. This is just a drop in the bucket of what he owes them all for that. But if that's what makes Aneela like him, he'll take it for now. “I'm just doing what anyone would do.”

“Is that so?” Delle Seyah asks, but she doesn't sound angry. “You know Pree can't stop us doing anything we really want to do.”

He can't, but Dutch and her people can. And Fancy can. He knows better than anyone how Hullen operate. And that means he's not going to argue with them and give them more information than they need. “Probably not,” he says.

“We're not planning on making an army,” Kin Rit says abruptly, and Delle Seyah swivels in her seat to stare at her for giving up an advantage. “We're trying to be good, Kendry, remember? We just want to understand it. It was older than the Lady. If we know what it is ...”

Fancy doesn't trust that, because studying it is what led them all to this in the first place. He knew Khlyen's memories, back when he was Hullen. But if their intentions are good, they'll let Pree rein them in, and Dutch keep her eye on them. They won't interfere if Fancy keeps making sure the balance stays until the Quad has time to start healing. “If you find out, let me know,” he says.

“Maybe we will,” says Kin Rit, and then turns back to Delle Seyah. “Do you want it? If we do make some more? Don't worry, you'd get the kind like we have.”

“Aneela,” Delle Seyah hisses, but when she looks unrepentant, she shrugs and looks at Fancy. “We don't have any interest in drones. That's not the way we want people to obey us.”

Fancy shakes his head and stands up. Even their way of being Hullen doesn't interest him, when he thinks about it for more than a few seconds. If Ria is smart, she'll understand that too. “No. Not for me, not this time.”

“Then we'll just have to make use of you in other ways,” says Delle Seyah, and presses a few buttons on her PDD. “There, payment transferred. Always a pleasure, Mr. Lee.”

“Can't say the same, but thanks,” he says, because he thinks he can get it, and bows his head while Kin Rit laughs before he walks out.

*

On his way back out to the RAC, to check in and make sure there haven't been any new sightings of the Lady's spawn and that Pree has been passing information on, not just baiting the Queens of Qresh, Fancy flies out far enough that he can look at the Quad laid out in front of him. Qresh and Leith are as green and serene as ever. Westerley still looks bad, but it's starting to recover, with Pree's guidance and Zeph's insistence on sticking around to reverse the terraforming. Arkyn, smallest of all, is quiet and dark. Someday, something new is going to go there. Maybe something good this time.

His PDD beeps, and Fancy takes a call from Turin, who scowls at him the second Fancy's face shows up on the screen. “What the hells were you doing out there? Just got a call from Team Awesome Force saying they're coming in. You had an escort warrant, Lee, how can you mess that up?”

Fancy smirks and turns his ship towards home. “Who says I messed up? We're the new RAC, right? I did exactly what I should do.”


End file.
